Archive for Boston Red Sox

Fenway Park will be different tonight. To the fans, a familiar voice will be missing. To those who work at the ballpark, a friend will be mourned. Carl Beane died unexpectedly yesterday at the age of 59.

Beane was The Voice of Fenway Park. The Agawam, Massachusetts, native had been the team’s public address announcer since 2003. His deep, rich baritone was instantly recognizable to a generation of fans.

His style was straightforward, with only an occasional flourish. When “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Fenway Park” came over the loudspeakers, it was easy to imagine it being a bygone era. Befitting his workplace, Carl Beane loved tradition.

He also loved his job. To many of his friends — and he had no shortage of those — that is how he’ll be remembered. The Voice of Fenway Park didn’t come to work. He came to do something he enjoyed, and it showed. Carl Beane will be missed.

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In the summer of 2005, I talked to Beane about his life and career for the book “Interviews from Red Sox Nation” [Maple Street Press, 2006]. As an appreciation, here are excerpts from that interview:

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Clayton Mortensen seems intent on showing that the Red Sox gained more than $5 million in payroll flexibility when they traded Marco Scutaro to Colorado in January. The 27-year-old right-hander has been outstanding in a pair of long-relief appearances since being called up from Triple-A. Were it not for Mark Reynolds, he would be almost perfect. The Orioles third baseman has homered and doubled against Mortensen — while hitters not named Mark Reynolds are a combined 1 for 20 with 11 strikeouts. Eight outs have come via ground balls.

Mortensen credits an ability to mix and match within the zone for his success. Of his 104 pitches during the two games, 44 have been either a two- or four-seamer, 32 have been changeups and 28 have been sliders. He has thrown strikes with 66% of his deliveries. Nearly 70% of his changeups have been strikes.

Mortensen talked about his repertoire over the weekend at Fenway Park.

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Mortensen on his slider: “My slider isn’t a typical slider. It doesn’t necessarily break right-to-left. It has more depth to it, so it’s more of a down-ball. It also has three different movements, depending on where my release point is. When I really accentuate staying on top of it — away to a righty — it will have a little depth and a little right-to-left movement. If I try to throw it down the middle, it’s more straight down. Sometimes it kind of screws. It’s basically because of the way I grip it. I kind of cock my wrist a little bit. To be honest, I try to throw it as hard as I can and it just kind of does what it wants to do.

“I threw one to Brandon Inge that he took for a strike, and then I threw another one that had a little more sideways action. I could see that he was kind of like, ‘What was that?’” Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Gammons wrote for the Boston Globe for over 30 years, from 1969 to 2000. In that time, he became the most prominent beat writer on the Boston Red Sox and one of the lead baseball analysts on ESPN, and that body of work elevated him to the Baseball Hall of Fame, when he received the 2004 J.G. Taylor Spink Award for sportswriters. But the Globe may be more disappointed than proud of Gammons at the moment.

On a sports talk radio show, Gammons criticized Globe reporter Bob Hohler, who last October famously broke the “chicken and beer” story of vast dissension within the Red Sox clubhouse down their disastrous stretch run in 2011. The images from that story, gleaned from anonymous sources, dominated the coverage of the team as manager Terry Francona was fired and general manager Theo Epstein decamped to Chicago: Francona’s alleged painkiller addictions and troubled marriage; Josh Beckett, John Lackey, and Jon Lester’s lax approach to conditioning and training; and Jacoby Ellsbury’s isolation from the rest of the clubhouse.

A week ago, Gammons said that Hohler should reveal his anonymous sources. This week, he amended that to say that he wished Hohler would reveal his sources, even though he understands that Hohler is unable to do so. Gammons clarified that he was concerned about the damage the allegations had done to Francona’s further managerial chances:

The 2012 season has begun… It caused [Francona] so much harm – including essentially eliminating him from any chance at the Cardinals job – I wonder why those who spoke anonymously cannot step forward and say they were among the sources.

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Henry Owens might be the most intriguing pitching prospect in the Red Sox organization. He may also be the most unique. Drafted 36th-overall last year out of a Huntington Beach, California high school, the 6-foot-7 southpaw wears size-17 shoes, surfs, plays both the piano and the guitar, and can throw a football 80 yards. His powerful left arm can also propel a baseball, as he’s been clocked as high as 94 mph. No less notable is the fact that Owens has an advanced feel for pitching that belies his 19 years.

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David Laurila: How would you define yourself as a pitcher?

Henry Owens: I’m probably more of a power pitcher. I’m looking to pitch to contact, but in more of an overpowering way. I’m trying to get strikeouts as well as ground balls. My fastball sits 90-92 and tops out at 94, and hopefully I’ll be able to raise my velocity a little bit as the year goes on.

I was taught to not just throw, but to pitch. There’s obviously a difference. Rather than just rearing back every time, you have to pitch with a purpose. I throw a lot of off-speed pitches.

DL: In your mind, pitchability and being a power pitcher aren’t mutually exclusive? Read the rest of this entry »

To run a successful minor league system you have to draft well every June and spend money wisely on the international market. But you also have to have some luck by mining other systems for undervalued talent. Below you’ll find six prospects with diminished prospect value that may be poised to finally see the light click on in 2012. All the players were, at one time, highly regarded. Only one of them appeared on my 2012 Top 15 prospects lists – coming in at No. 15 on the Boston Red Sox ranking.

Mike Kvasnicka, C, Houston: Kvasnicka saw his draft stock take a huge leap in 2010 when he showed solid skills behind the dish while playing at the University of Minnesota. Hoping to get Kvasnicka to the Majors sooner rather than later the Astros organization made the decision to move him to a less demanding position. Unfortunately, his bat was not as potent as expected and did not profile well at the hot corner. The new front office regime recently made the decision to relocate Kvasnicka back behind the dish. He may return to low-A ball in 2012 to get re-acclimated with catching without putting too much pressure on his offensive game. He tired in the second half of 2011 so he’ll have to get stronger to withstand a full year of squatting behind the plate. A switch-hitting catcher carries a ton of potential value.

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Daniel Bard is moving into the Red Sox rotation this summer, and according to the stat-savvy flamethrower, data supports the decision. Bard went 2-9, 3.33 as a set-up man last year, but those aren’t the numbers he looked at when he began exploring a new role. The Boston right-hander explained his thought-process prior to Monday’s game in Fort Myers.

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Daniel Bard: “I’ve always kind of watched the starting pitchers who have success in the big leagues. I watch them on a daily basis, throughout the year, and think, ‘This guy is pretty good; what is he doing that I can’t do?’ That’s what kind of started this whole thing.

“From there I took a little deeper look at the numbers I’ve put up over the past three years. While they’re spread out over a three-year period, they total roughly 200 innings and kind of give a gauge of what is possible over a full season. That’s the way I saw it.

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The name and the face are different, but when it comes to the bigger picture, Ben Cherington looks, and sounds, a lot like Theo Epstein. The new Boston GM is his own man — make no mistake about that — but like his predecessor he is cool, calculated, and sabermetrically savvy. Befitting the Red Sox model, Cherington is all about information and assigning value.

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David Laurila: In a May 2009 interview, Andrew Friedman said of the Rays’ organization “We have guided ourselves by the principle that information is king.” Do the Red Sox have the same approach?

Ben Cherington: I think that every team is looking for the most precise information that applies to their particular situation. Every team’s situation is different, so the way that each team applies that information is different. The business of baseball in Boston is different than the business of baseball in other cities.

We may be looking for some of the same information that other teams are, but we may apply it differently. Ultimately, we’re trying to do the same thing that every other team is trying to do, which is to use our resources in the most efficient way possible within the context of our baseball and business models.

We’re looking for any information that can help us assign an appropriate value to a player, regardless of the segment of the market that player is coming from. It could be a teenager in the Dominican, it could be an amateur player in the States that we’re evaluating for the draft, it could be a minor league player with another organization, or it could be major league player. It’s also our own players, both in the minor leagues and at the major league level.

With every player that is a potential target for us, or is someone that we need to assign a value to, we’re looking to acquire as much information as we can about that player. We try to be as precise as we possibly can.

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Boston Red Sox minor league second baseman Sean Coyle is a solid minor league prospect which is actually pretty rare for a player of his stature. In fact, in three years spent Scouting the Sally, only a handful of prospects have been worthy of more than a cursory look (Jose Altuve – HOU, Leury Garcia – TEX, Wilfredo Tovar – NYM) which speaks volumes about Coyle as a baseball player. However, as kind as it may seem on the surface to compare the best second baseman in the Red Sox system to the best second baseman in baseball – organization mate Dustin Pedroia – it’s pretty unfair to both players.

Video after the jump

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As noted in the introduction to last Friday’s conversation with Chris Chambliss, three years ago I did a series of short interviews that were never published and will appear in this space over the coming weeks. They focus on baseball during the decades of the 1980s, and today’s subject is Wade Boggs, who played for the Red Sox, Yankees and Devil Rays from 1982-1999.

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Boggs, on OBP in the ‘80s: “That was my game. It was how I thrived, but at the point in time that I played, I was criticized for doing something that is now fashionable – Moneyball, or whatever you want to call it. Today, everybody is looking for a guy who can get on base 250 times a year, and at the time I was doing it I was getting 200 hits and 100 walks. Then I would go to arbitration and be criticized for doing something that [front offices] now love.

“Billy Beane, the guy in Oakland, is the one who really put it on the map and it’s been fashionable for close to 10 years by now. Like I said, it wasn’t that way when I played, especially earlier in my career. I led off, so I always felt that it was my job to get on base and set the table for Jim Rice, Tony Armas, Dwight Evans, and all the big guys coming up to drive me in. That was a part of the game that I excelled at, but quite frankly, it was a part of the game that I was criticized for.”

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Dwight Evans is one of the most beloved players in Red Sox history. Known for his class and dignity almost as much as for what he did on the field, the man affectionately known as “Dewey” played more games in a Red Sox uniform than anyone except Carl Yastrzemski. A member of the star-crossed 1975 and 1986 teams, he also played in some of Boston’s most-memorable games.

An underrated hitter throughout much of his career, Evans hit .272/.370/.470, with 385 home runs, and no player in baseball had more extra-base hits during the decade of the 1980s. Widely regarded as he best defensive right fielder of his era, he won eight Gold Gloves. Bill James has called him “one of the most-underrated players in baseball history.”

As good as he was between the lines — his numbers compare favorably to several players enshrined in Cooperstown — Dwight Evans has been an even better husband and father.

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